Beverage making containers of this type can be used for coffee, tea or other tea type materials where the ingredients are placed in the container and hot water is added to infuse the active ingredients into the water allowing the beverage to be discharged while the ingredients remain trapped in the container.
Melitta manufacture a device of the type where the container supports a paper filter and the water is poured onto the ingredients in the filter and are allowed to drip through the filter at a rate determined by the filter paper. Devices of this type are generally not suitable for tea and tea type materials because the ingredients must remain sitting in the water for a longer period to effect steeping of the tea.
Other device of this general type include a valve at the bottom which actively holds the materials in the container until the steeping action is complete. Such a device is sold by Adagio teas under the trade mark “Ingenuitea”. This includes a plate at the bottom which sits on top of the top rim of a cup and activates the valve to release the beverage through a duct into the cup.
Examples of this type of device are also shown in the following patent documents:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,898,090 (Chan) assigned to Melitta discloses a filter container arranged to be mounted on a specially adapted jug.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,493 (Lin Tien) issued Oct. 27, 1998 shows an infusion urn of this type formed in two pieces fastened together including an upper container piece for the liquid and a bottom movable piece which is arranged to sit on a cup. A valve is formed by a stopper mounted on a pin carried by the bottom piece. The stopper is moved upwardly with the bottom piece when the device is placed on a cup so that the stopper moves from a seat at the bottom of the upper container piece to open the valve and allow discharge of the contents of the infusion urn. A filter is located in the bottom of the urn above the stopper so that the ingredients are collected in the urn while the liquid discharges.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,827 (Lin Tien) issued May 9, 2000 discloses a similar arrangement to that of the above patent.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,164,190 (Lin Tien) issued Dec. 26, 2000 discloses further similar arrangement where a one piece urn has a bottom plate arranged to sit on the rim of the cup which pushes upwardly to distort a buckling disk to move the stopper upwardly.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,965 (Lin Tien) issued Dec. 11, 2001 and U.S. Pat. D432,205 (Lin Tien) show further examples of devices of this type.
US Published Application 2009/0272276 (Lin Tien) published Nov. 5, 2009 and US Published Application 2010/0212509 (Lin Tien) published Aug. 26, 2010 show further examples of devices of this type.
US Published Application 2009/0057348 (Pao-Wu Tien) published Mar. 5, 2009 shows a further example of devices of this type using a different type of valve which has a through bore and is operated manually by a thumb wheel.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,343,542 (Shen) issued Feb. 5, 2002 discloses an arrangement of this type which has a steel ball forming the valve activated by a manual trigger on the handle.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,805,040 (Chang) issued Oct. 19, 2004 discloses an arrangement of this type which has a mushroom shaped valve activated by a manual trigger on the handle.